


Pragmatism

by dollteeth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-17
Updated: 2011-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 20:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollteeth/pseuds/dollteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It helps to have a keen sense of what is useful.  Peter-centric, dysfunctional!Marauders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pragmatism

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written circa March 2006.

Peter had never shared his fellow Gryffindors’ flair for the dramatic.

Love of attention seemed to come naturally to most of them. James loved the cheers and the trophies nearly as much as he loved Quidditch itself. Oftentimes it seemed like Sirius made his arguments as loud and public as possible, dragging them out from behind closed doors and using the audience as another tool by which to mortify his family. Lily, upstanding prefect that she was, saved her histrionics for weekend rallies and protests. Even Remus showed off a bit for the younger students he tutored, and seemed to enjoy the attention he got from girls.

For a long while, Peter thought he was defective. When Professor McGonagall caught him by surprise in class, he grew preoccupied with the fact that everyone was suddenly _watching_ him and he lost his head completely; if James and Sirius were in especially extroverted moods, Peter hung back and watched and tried to compensate for how uncomfortable they made him.

Eventually he realized that his position had its advantages. All his friends wore everything on their sleeves without realizing it, even when they didn’t mean to – and because Peter wasn’t onstage with them, he could listen. Peter knew that every time Remus enthused about his (of course, _strictly academic_ ) research on the Dark Arts, James avoided his eyes and Sirius’s hands twitched as though he wanted to smack some sense into him. Peter knew that Sirius was so stupidly, blindly enamored of James that he would go to the ends of the earth for him, and he knew that James liked it when people behaved conveniently and would probably let him do it.

It made it so Peter could control them all, a little, when the situation called for it. It wasn’t usually necessary, but when James’s resolve faltered or Sirius revealed yet another hole in his armor, Peter mentally took notes.

•

It seemed to Peter that the natural order of things was that he and Remus revolved through the fringes of James and Sirius’s little solar system. If they weren’t all together as a group, then the primary unit was always _James-and-Sirius_ — Peter might study with Remus alone once in awhile, like planets meeting briefly at the far side of their orbit, but he felt that catching James or Sirius apart from one another for more than a few minutes ought to be impossible.

Despite this, Sirius seemed to make an effort to make time for Peter specifically. When it was all of them together, they weren't any closer than Peter was with Remus. Now and then, though, Sirius would turn up while Peter was studying in the library and talk to him while they did homework. He didn’t seem to feel the need to insult him so liberally without James there as an audience, and Peter was grateful that Sirius condescended to spend time with him even if he didn’t entirely trust it.

There was, Peter figured out, something about him that made Sirius want to confide all his secrets. Peter would have been a little insulted at being Sirius’s therapist, but he said so many things that might end up being useful that Peter let him keep talking. He was trying his best to like James’s new girl ( _because it bothers you that you’re jealous_ ), he was terribly afraid for his little brother ( _but not afraid enough to do anything_ ), he still felt awful over the thing with Snape and Moony ( _but what could have happened to Snape isn’t the reason you feel guilty_ ). And of course there were the secrets that could be inferred all to easily that Sirius didn’t even know he was disclosing – the ones he wouldn’t recognise even if Peter named them.

Peter never mentioned the conversations to anyone else, because he didn’t need to — he liked Sirius because he liked that Sirius liked him, and right now he didn’t need anything from him. But if he ever did, Peter knew that with the right words Sirius would hand over his weaknesses with a smile.

•

Peter liked his friends, as he told himself quite often, but he wouldn’t have put up with half the teasing he got from them if their friendship hadn’t been helpful. James and Sirius were more apt to throw their popular-boy weight around and leap to his defense when he was willing to endure being called a prat on a daily basis. It was annoying, but his friends did help shield him from more serious harm in exchange for his tolerance, so Peter didn’t complain much.

“You sure it doesn’t bother you?” Remus asked once, looking genuinely concerned. “Because if it does, I’ll talk to them.” Remus wouldn’t be able to tell either of them off properly if his life depended on it — he enjoyed the attention they gave him far too much—but he liked to act as though he could.

“I’m fine,” Peter told him. “I know they don’t really mean it.”

They didn’t, at least not much, but the Order certainly seemed to. Peter was allowed to attend all the important meetings simply because his friends were, too, but that was as far as Albus Dumbledore’s esteem went; he was never trusted with any really important tasks, and his ideas were usually dismissed outright or mangled beyond recognition.

“That’s a very interesting take on it, Mr. Pettigrew.” And that was the last of it, unless the idea was regurgitated by someone who looked and sounded more clever.

In the early days of the war, Peter tolerated it the same way he’d tolerated Sirius and James’s needling in school. He may not have been a very important member of the Order, but he was still a member, and that was understood to mean more protection than could be given to just anybody. Order members still died, of course, but no system was foolproof, and Peter thought he was better off inside than out.

He believed all this until 1979 happened.

They were able to patch most of Meadowes back together, though they never did find her eyes. The Death Eaters were more thorough with Fenwick, and besides a pair of broken glasses in the middle of a crater, nothing of Dearborn was ever found. The aftermath of the Prewetts Peter actually saw firsthand, and what had happened to them didn’t frighten him as much as the fact that the backup they’d called for didn’t arrive until half an hour later.

No one forced Peter’s hand outright. There was no single moment that turned him away from the Order, and he wasn’t even approached first — he sent a letter to the Dark Lord via Rabastan Lestrange and the rest was history. But Peter saw no point in remaining somewhere he wasn’t wanted if they couldn’t even protect him, so he might as well find someone who could.


End file.
